


It should hurt sometimes

by LeftHandOfSnarkness



Series: I'm not drowning I'm just seeing how long I can stay down [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Diego Hargreeves, Bisexual Frank Castle, I guess I'm doing this, M/M, Vigilantes in Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26278414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftHandOfSnarkness/pseuds/LeftHandOfSnarkness
Summary: When you spend your nights fighting crime, getting into fights, getting punched and stabbed and shot, it's hard to imagine someone touching you and not having it hurt.
Relationships: Frank Castle & Diego Hargreeves, Frank Castle/ Diego Hargreeves
Series: I'm not drowning I'm just seeing how long I can stay down [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909315
Kudos: 29





	It should hurt sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck it, I guess I'm making more of these, now. How many? Who the heck knows. 
> 
> Title comes from Justin Townes Earle's song "Mama's Eyes," from the line "I am my father's son/We don't see eye to eye/And I'll be the first to admit I've never tried/It sure hurts me, it should hurt sometime," which I thought was very fitting for Diego. 
> 
> Series title is from the song "Picture in a drawer" by the same artist.

Almost every time they touch each other, it hurts. Not always intentionally, of course, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Beneficial, even. Bones need to be snapped into place, dislocated shoulders put back in their sockets, glass pulled out of wounds. Things don't heal properly without that last bit of pain to help set them right, and he'd rather have Frank do it than someone else. Normal people give too much pity, and medical professionals too much judgement. Frank just does what needs to be done, and Diego returns the favor. He doesn't ask questions (other than "did you get them all?", and eventually he stops asking that, too), doesn't give lectures, doesn't ask why Diego is dripping in blood and knocking on his door at 3 am. He just lets him in to his shitty apartment, bandages him up, and offers him a swig of rotgut to help numb the pain. Sometimes even lets him crash on the creaky, too-small bed, when he doesn't think he'll be able to make it home. (Diego likes those nights, because the bed smell like Frank, like CLP and blood and coffee.) And when Frank shows up in the gym, limping and growling like a beaten dog, Diego helps him down the stairs to the boiler room and gets him ready to fight another day. 

But outside of patching each other up, their touch still hurts. Because Diego has never been all that good at showing affection in general, and certainly not toward other guys. So they spar with each other, alone under the flickering lights of Al's gym, long after everyone else goes home, because that is a language he can understand. They are good at it, both of them, nearly evenly matched and with no one else to fight who is willing to go as hard as they need to in order to really test themselves. "Steel sharpens steel," Frank likes to say, and Diego feels a brutal, savage pride whenever he hears him say it, because Frank Castle thinks he is good enough to go up against. So they jab, block, duck, kick. Diego likes to fight on his feet, enough distance to throw a knife, to keep his options open. Frank likes to fight on the ground, because if he's lost the benefit of his guns he might as well keep someone down in the dirt, cut off their escape. Diego learns this lesson the way he learns all of them- the hard way- when Frank knocks his ankles out from under him and slams him down on the ground in one of the cleanest tackles he's ever seen. Frank learns the hard way that breathing isn't entirely a requirement for Diego when he gets him in a headlock and it doesn't do jack shit except let Diego catch him off guard. Neither one of them wins, neither one of them loses. Steel sharpens steel. 

The thing is, they aren't friends- not really. Friends are for people who have a normal life. And they aren't partners. They don't go on missions together or really share much information. But they don't hate each other, and they don't try to change each other, and that is something. So on the rare days when they aren't out on missions or too beat up to move, sometimes they'd sit on the roof of the gym, drinking beers and shooting the shit, Diego's police radio a low buzz in the background.  
"You want another one?" he asked, reaching back to grab himself another one of the rapidly-warming bottles. "Castle!" he said, louder, when Frank didn't respond, doesn't seem to have heard him.  
"What?"  
"I said, 'You want another beer?'"  
"Oh, sure," Frank said, grabbing it from him and using his ring to pop off the top  
"Ears like that and you still can't hear shit," Diego had muttered, before he had time to think if saying something like that was a good idea, but Frank just threw back his head and laughed  
"Shit, Hargreeves, you should have seen me when I was a kid," he said, shoulders shaking with laughter "looked like fuckin' Dumbo or some shit," and Diego couldn't help but laugh, too  
"Yea, well, I'm sure you'll grow into them some day," he said, and Frank slapped him on the back, still chuckling to himself. It hurt, but not as much as it could have. 

It hurts, touching Frank, Frank touching him. There is almost no way around it. They both have too many wounds- half healed bones, fresh bruises, cuts with the stitches still in- to avoid it even if they were trying to, and they aren't. But if pain is inevitable in their line of work, then he can't really complain too much when it is administered without malice. And if spends one too many nights imagining scenarios where there is only touch between the two of them, and no pain at all... well, that's his problem to deal with.

**Author's Note:**

> "Diego gets him a big titty goth BF," part 2. 
> 
> "Steel sharpens steel" is something my old Sergeant Major used to say all the time, and it sounds like the sort of thing Frank would say.


End file.
